


Refraction of the Dying Light

by FishMcSpine



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst, Catharsis, Deathfic, Depression, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, I can only hope that this doesn't come off as utterly stupid, Kid!Prompto, Meeting Younger Self, Purgatory, Sad Ending, Sad with a Sad Ending, Self-Harm, Suicide, This is just straight up sad and not good, Unreliable Narrator, if there's a tag for that kind of thing please tell me idk what to call it, im sad, probably, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 13:20:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16175903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FishMcSpine/pseuds/FishMcSpine
Summary: Prompto commits himself to suicide, but, before he dies, he's faced with the presence of his younger self.





	Refraction of the Dying Light

**Author's Note:**

> Oooohhh yikes I probably shouldn’t have written this, but I am in an awful, awful headspace so this is what we get. PLEASE heed the tags. This fic is just bad and, honestly, a few weeks ago I probably would’ve hated this fic if I read it so I don't blame anyone for feeling frustrated or likewise but it’s just kinda where I’m at right now. 
> 
> Also, re: the Unreliable Narrator tag, no one's here to stop Prompto from completely ripping into himself and there's really no scope for what his relationship with the bros is like or how they feel about his presence. It's just all Bad things here but not necessarily true things and ain't that a good tag for describing a sick brain
> 
> Anyway, be safe y’all

The first thing he’s aware of is an ache that runs through his whole body; unfamiliar and threaded under his skin. The second is the burning of his eyes beneath their lids and the creeping brightness that burns an aching red where light is trying to burst through.

The skin around his eyes feels raw and stiff as he forces them open to gauge his surroundings, and, when they’re finally stretched far enough to see, he isn’t sure it was worth the effort. There’s nothing to be seen.

Almost in a very literal sense, in fact. He can see his legs stretched out in front of himself, but then, just beyond them, there is only negative space. It’s as if an empty canvas stretches endlessly around him without even a discernible horizon line to determine where anything starts or ends.

If he focuses on sensations though, he can feel tangible in the space. The surface beneath him feels solid and impossibly flat, but it also doesn’t seem to have a temperature of its own. Everything is as lukewarm as his skin feels.

As he raises himself up on shaky legs, he tries to discern the chain of events that led to here. One does not simply awaken in a white void, he’s pretty sure about that. Which could suggest this is a dreamscape of some kind, but he’s immediately doubtful of the thought. Albeit bleak, his dreams have never been this empty, and his awareness feels far too tangible to be surfacing from beneath the thick blanket of sleep. So what else.

Astral intervention seems highly unlikely. Not with someone like him. But the absolute sense of unreality permeating the atmosphere is difficult to internalize. He can’t find the strength to panic, but it was as if from the moment he woke here, bewilderment had been pooling in him as if from a faucet, and he’s just about to overflow with it.

He thinks harder about what led up to this. He was in his home. No one was there. No one came in, so no one else did this to him. He was in his room, the sky was changing from black to muted blue as the sun was crawling its way up the sky. He hadn’t slept. So maybe he really did pass out and this is all a delusion of his sleepless mind.

He doesn’t remember the feeling of sleep calling to him though. He remembers his eyes burning. He remembers shaking uncontrollably as that burn led to hot tears dripping down his cheeks, and a painful tightness in his throat that no stretch of time could will away. He’d been crying so long, harboring an overwhelming sense of finality. His fingers ached desperately, gripping too tightly around the handle of a knife he’d grabbed from the kitchen.

He looks down at himself and sees pajamas, and at his hands he sees a sort of confirmation of his recollections. Amidst a myriad of short scars of varying ages littered around his veins, there is a long jagged line that stretches from his wrist and all the way up the inside of his forearm. He’d never had this scar before. It would have only appeared tonight.

Right.

That was the last thing he remembered. Passing out from that would make sense. Waking up in a hospital would be disappointing, but would have also made sense. But the space he’d been greeted with was not quite the fluorescent judgment of an ER. Similar, but distinctly emptier.

He moves himself forward and tries to find anything that will help make more sense of this space. The grand abundance of Nothing does little for making the area identifiable, but eventually his eyes meet with a short shape in the distance.

Another person.

He approaches, prepared to get answers or mutual confusion from this sole presence of company, but the closer he gets the faster his stomach drops.

The person is a young boy, a strange presence to meet in an indeterminate void, but he also greatly resembles the visage Prompto recalls from his his own past.

No, it’s not just a resemblance, this boy looks _exactly_ the way Prompto had appeared when he was younger.

The boy is looking around confusedly, but there’s a distinct lack of distress in him. His rounded cheeks have a warm peachy color to them and exude a healthy glow that makes Prompto wonder if that too was in his past or if his skin had ever been anything but drained and clammy.

The boy’s bespectacled eyes finally meet Prompto’s and they expand with wonder.

“Oh! Hello?” Comes a smaller version of his own voice, but it carries volume and strength within that asserts itself.

“… Hey…” Prompto says, not sure what else he _can_ say.

The boy’s head tilts a little to the side. “Who are you supposed to be? A guardian angel?”

Prompto snorts, but he feels like crying. “What? Me? No.”

“Oh? Hm.” The boy muses and steps closer. “Who are you then? Where are we?”

“Um,” Prompto says, and really doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say. What are you supposed to say to a younger version of yourself? “I’m, uh. Are you… uh, you’re Prompto, right? Uh, Prompto Argentum?”

He smiles wide. “Yeah! That’s me. You _are_ a guardian angel, aren’t you!”

“N-no, no I’m not, don’t get your hopes up,” Prompto shakes his head insistently, and seeing his young face staring so hopefully up at him makes the quiet ache in his throat tighten anew. “I’m, uh, huh. Uh, yeah, get this, my name is, uh, also! Prompto Argentum.”

“What! No way, I’ve never met anyone named Prompto before, really?” he says it with enchanted eyes and Prompto wants him to stop looking at him like that.

“Yeah, really.” He says with a smile that feels so disorientating on this face. “I, uh, this is going to sound weird and totally like a movie, but I’m, uh, pretty sure that I’m… you? From… the future?”

“ _What!?_ ” the boy is absolutely ecstatic with this information and it takes him a long moment to internalize it. “Wow! This is so cool! You’re really me? Wow…!” his words hang in an awestruck pause and then he gasps, “Wait! You have to tell me something that only the real me would know. That way I know it’s true!”

A breath that’s almost a laugh escapes Prompto and he frowns. His hand raises in front of him, free of any bands. “You have… a barcode on your right wrist. It looks like this.” 

Just like that, the wonderment starts to drain from his eyes. “Oh, yeah. That’d be me, right?”

“Haha, yeah. I swear they’re the same, but, like, I dunno if you wanna look for yourself.”

Prompto gestures the hand at his smaller self who shakes his head with a small laugh, “Yeah, nah, I’ll—I’ll believe you on that. No one else has anything like it.”

Prompto nods and lowers his hand and for a moment they’re both silent. Of course Prompto would manage to make a conversation between he and himself completely awkward. Classic Promptos.

“So,” the younger Prompto starts speaking again, and the other can still hear that hint of wonder clinging to the surface of his voice like oil over water. “You’re really future me… what’s it like? The future?”

He doesn’t know what to say to that. “It’s… uh…”

Under any other circumstance, he wouldn’t subject a kid to this conversation. But this kid is also himself. That tears down a bunch of social ethical boundaries, doesn’t it?

Does it?

What the hell is he supposed to say?

He diverts the question, “Look, this is weird, I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t think I’m supposed to be here. I was—leaving.”

Confusion swims across the younger’s face. “Hm? Well… I don’t get what’s going on either. But this has gotta be something important, right? Like, I dunno, do you have a message? That’s a thing that future people usually do.”

He shifted uncomfortably. “I mean, there’s nothing good to say. I don’t have any aged wisdom to hand off to you. Sorry, I don’t know what to tell ya.”

The frown on the boy’s face deepens. “… Nothing?” 

Now he sees eyes that look like his own starting to look genuinely sad and Prompto doesn’t know how to cope with that any better than the preceding optimism. “I,,, I don’t know what this is, but I guess if you’re here then I should just say it. I…” he has to take a breath and for a moment the words aren’t coming out. It’s one thing to acknowledge it in his mind, but to put it into spoken words is something too concrete. Damn it, he already dragged a knife down his arm, he isn’t supposed to be needing to _think_ about this anymore. This is stupid, he doesn’t want to do this anymore, _why is this happening?_

He breathes again, and it’s a rattling sound. “Prompto, I, uh, yeah, um…” he holds up his arm and tries to emphasize the fresh jagged line trailing across it. “… I killed myself.”

There’s silence as the boy tries to process what he’s heard and Prompto feels sick and uncomfortable. This is fucked up, this is fucked up, this is—

“ _Why would you do that_?” The boy’s voice eventually comes out, and it’s one of the worst sounds he’s ever heard. It sounds betrayed, desperate, scared, and miserably confused.

“Uh… why _wouldn’t_ you.” Prompto dares to ask. It feels cruel the second the words are out, but he also knows the mind of the boy he’s talking to better than anyone else, and it doesn’t feel so unfair to ask.

There’s a moment where something flickers on the boy’s face. It feels like hopelessness. But he springs back from it and leans forward evidently with his ambitions in order. “Because I’m going to get better! I met Prince Noctis, and I’m going to be his friend! I’ve decided to take control, starting with what I eat, because I can do that! I’m going to be a good person and I’m working hard and I know I can do it.” His gaze on Prompto intensifies. “And we do, don’t we! We changed and moved forward! Right? Look at you! You look so cool, wow… you look like you could be on TV! Tell me I’m right, please, you’re friends with Prince Noctis?” 

The endearing emotions shaping themselves on the boy’s face should make Prompto feel happy for him, and happy himself to confirm that he does indeed succeed in becoming a part of the Prince’s life. And Prompto is certain a victory pose struck by his younger self would be inevitable once the news was delivered. But these feelings pass entirely through him and do nothing to lift the frown his lips are bent into. He sighs a little and braces himself.

“Yeah. We get to meet Noct again. And we become friends. We hang out all the time.”

It happens. There’s a gasp and a too-big smile, too-sparkly eyes, and a small cheer as the boy pumps his fists in victory. Prompto knows how much the boy’s been hinging on that goal, and he knows the all-consuming sense of validation he must be feeling from the news. He can’t deny him that. Even as his current self, he has to admit that getting the chance to be friends with Noctis has been the best thing that ever happened to him.

He still can’t smile.

“So we’re friends with His Highness!? That’s so cool…!” the boy is saying, still grinning too much for Prompto’s comfort, but he can see the excitement starting to recede. “So then… what happened? You did exactly what you wanted to, right? We—we did it. So why would you—what happened?” 

Prompto swallowed and it did nothing to dissuade the tightness in his throat. “It doesn’t work. Not really. Noct—he lives a completely different life. He—he’s so perfect. And—and his friends are perfect. There’s no place for a commoner beside him. And, in the end, I—I really don’t know what I was thinking. He deserves so much better than me.”

“But… but he’s so cool, and he’s always looked like he needs a friend at school. He just needs someone to be understanding with him, right? Can’t that be me?”

He can feel a painful heat in the back of his eyes as he shakes his head. “The thing is, he has people who care about him; people who are so much better at being there for him than we can ever be. I—I’ve never belonged around him. Do you know that we can’t shut up around people? Yeah, I guess I didn’t think about it because I never talked to people before then, but we’re basically a motor mouth and all we say is stupid shit, because I think it’s funny or could make the guys smile and it’s just. It’s fucking weird.”

The boy’s mouth twitches downward. “I dunno, it sounds like you’re just being, uh, friendly?”

A frustrated breath of air pushes out through his nose. “No, it’s called being obtrusive and annoying. It’s one thing if you pull a joke sometimes, but if it’s just all bullshit all the time, it just gets fucking old real quick.”

The frown on the younger Prompto’s face looks hurt. “You’re swearing a lot.”

He freezes for a moment, gaze locked with sad eyes on an almost disappointed face, and then his own face feels twisted and distorted. He realizes he’s laughing, but he’s crying. The laughing sounds strange, not loud or maniacal, but strangled and rough. It’s coming out in breaths that are too short, and it feels too close to sobbing. But the turn of his lips is a smile, and it’s snagged in place as he cries through the laughter.

It lasts for no notable stretch of time and as the fit leaves him all he can contemplate is the remaining numbness. “That’s your problem? I’m telling you how useless we are and you’re hung up on some fucking strong language?”

The frown deepens. “I dunno…”

“Don’t—don’t _look_ at me like that,” Prompto squeezes his eyes and heaves a breath. He can’t—he can’t be judged by his own self. Sure, he can’t deny that he hates himself, not after what he he’s done, but—but this? If he has to hear it from this Prompto, he doesn’t think he can handle it. He _knows_ , but he can’t endure the confirmation. He already tore his arm open to escape this, _he can’t handle any more._

He breathes back in. “It’s nothing. I got it from them mostly. The guys, they swear all the time. Besides, consider it a perk of being an adult, yeah? Y’know, like, R-rated movies.”

“Hah… I already forgot.” He looks like he’s trying to laugh it off, but he hasn’t had the same amount of time Prompto’s had to master the look. In the end his smile just looks sad. “I didn’t think about how much older you must be. This is me as an adult, huh? Must be cool, not having to be stuck to kid rules. You get to do whatever you want, yeah?”

He frowns. “It doesn’t really change anything. Parents being around was never a thing anyway, you know that. And, yeah, they don’t really ever end up come back, so, I dunno, _yay?_ It ended up being more of the same, I don’t know what to tell ya.”

“Well,” his lips are pressed into a thoughtful line. “I’m sure stuff changed. I mean, hey! I bet we at least got better at photography,” as the thought escapes his lips he becomes visibly more excited. “Do we do it for a job? That’d be so cool, getting paid to do what we love!” 

His head shakes and his shoulders move automatically into a shrug. His whole body aches. “I wait on tables. Not good enough at photography to make a living off it.”

Prompto hates how hurt the boy looks at that. “Oh… I guess that makes sense.” He says, smiling anyway. “I figured it was a long shot. I could hope though, yeah?”

He means it rhetorically, Prompto knows that, and he’s not looking like he’s waiting for an answer/ He just looks like he’s musing sad and wistful thoughts. But Prompto’s biting back the _no, you can’t_ that’s burning on his tongue. What did that hope ever do. Where did it get him.

“S-so, can you tell me about Prince Noctis?” he’s saying, still so star-struck at the prospect, “Are you friends with his friends? How many friends have you made?”

“I told you, we don’t fit in with them.” He feels like his whole body is trembling and he doesn’t want to feel this again. “They’re Noctis’s friends, not mine. All I do is inconvenience them when they’re supposed to be focusing on Noct anyway. Noctis, Ignis, Gladio, those are the only three people I’ve managed to talk to. That’s all you managed to meet, just barely and out of pity, and. And. Turns out we really, _really_ don’t deserve them. They’re great, and don’t you realize? That we’re not? All we’ve done is overstep our presence and I don’t know why, Prompto, I don’t know why I kept trying.”

He can see the other’s eyes watering, but it’s strange to see it contorted in sympathy instead of self-destructive despair “S-sure you do. I—I want to be someone’s friend—and—and feel like I belong somewhere. That—that’s what you were doing.”

He shook his head. “Selfish. Annoying. That’s all I ever proved to be. I was alone for so long because, turns out, y’know, that’s how it was supposed to be. I, uh, really think I’m done with that though. Gotta stop weighing down on everyone eventually, y’know? I figure, sooner is better. It’s the only thing that feels right.”

He looks like he’s trying to smile at him, but it’s wobbling and watching this is starting to make him feel sick. “But—but you kept talking to them right? They—they’re like friends to you right?”

“They’re all I had.” Prompto says, and _he hates this, he hates this so much_. He wants to rip his arm open all over again. He wants the pain in his throat to disappear. He wants to disappear. “They’re all amazing, but you don’t get it. I tried. I did everything you’re thinking of now, because _I’m you!_ I know what you think you should try to do different, and we do it all, and it turns out that none of it works. You feel like a stranger everywhere you go. It turns out nothing feels like home. Not even your own skin.”

The boy smiles sadly then, and _oh hell no, he is not being pitied by a vision of his younger self what the fuck is this,_ “I… guess that makes sense. But, okay, we’ve just got to try harder, right? If Noctis gave me the time of day, that’s gotta mean something right? Y-yeah! That’s definitely progress from where I am now. That’s… still so exciting to think about. I mean, I don’t think I can ever get over the fact that I actually get to meet Prince Noctis properly and talk to his friends. That’s something! That’s better than being alone, right? There’s so much we can do with this future!” 

He can’t take it. 

“What are you so hopeful about!” Prompto finally snaps and his younger self takes a step back, but he can’t feel the regret. There’s no kindness for himself to spare. “It doesn’t work like that! Just—just latching onto Noctis and pretending you belong there isn’t some key to happiness! You waste his time and all you get is the realization that even being around your favorite people doesn’t make you feel less lonely! You’re lonely now, you’re going to grow up to become lonely, and you never get better! You want to do things, but you never stopped to realize that none of it means anything!” his voice relents to the aching pressure in his throat and the emotions begin to overflow in tears. His face feels disgusting and the sounds coming out of his mouth don’t sound any better. He wonders if the boy is disgusted by him too. “When I’m gone, nothing is out of place. I really, truly don’t matter. I’m—I’m useless! All these years, nothing’s gotten better. Nothing feels right. The only thing that feels right—“ he thrusts his arm upward in a motion that feels strained, “—is this! I’m supposed to be dead! I killed myself! I can’t do this anymore, _I can’t! Okay!?”_

“N…no… not okay…” the boy mumbles, and Prompto can’t see the details of his face through the tears sliding against his vision, but the tremble of the voice makes the likelihood of tears almost certain. “I… this isn’t… this isn’t right. Why are you talking like this? I—I know I’m no prince, but—but I can do _something_ right? I—do you remember Chibi? Wasn’t it nice having her around? You could do that again, you can adopt a dog a-and—”

“She left,” Prompto remembers, and his voice sounds flat and strange and he doesn’t want to listen to it anymore. Then he breathes in, “No, no, that’s not fair. Pryna belongs to Lady Lunafreya. Of course she wouldn’t stay. But what dog would, really.” His younger self looks like he’s about to refute him and Prompto drags his hand down his face. “No, that’s—that’s dumb. I know dogs are—fine. Dogs are fine. Prompto, I— _gods_ , I can’t just take a dog and make it my only reason to live.”

“ _Can’t you?_ ”

A shaky breath, “Not when I hate myself so much. Not if it means forcing anyone or any _thing_ to keep my company.” He closes his eyes. “I can really picture it, looking at some poor dog in my house, thinking how much better they would be with someone else, and how unfair keeping it would be to the damned thing.” 

“I... you could… I… _doesn’t it hurt?_ You… you should stop. _”_

He laughs and feels so strange. “Of _course_ it hurts. That’s the point. It doesn’t really matter. Or, it’s not going to. If it means no one ever has to deal with me again, then it really, truly doesn’t matter.”

“You..” he’s struggling to find something, something, anything to say that would work, but there’s nothing left for him to grasp hold of. “If you… if you believe it hard enough, I’m sure you can go back! Things can be okay, and you can try again!” 

He shakes his head. “There’s nothing for me to go back for. I can’t keep going back to feeling like that. Like… like this? I… I’m so tired. I’m so tired. _I’m so tired_. I’m, uh, done with it all, uh, yeah, thanks.” 

The tears in the boy’s eyes are slipping down his cheeks now and he sniffs a wet sound before letting his eyebrows furrow with determination. “Then—then _I’m_ going to go back! And—and _I’ll_ fix this! I’ll change! I’m you, so—so I’ll make myself into a _great_ person! And, when I grow up, you’ll be me, so _you’ll_ be a great person too! I’ll make things better! I’ll make sure that you—that you—that you won’t _ever_ want to die!” 

Prompto blinks more tears from his eyes and finally gives a quick nod. It’s all he can do. “Yeah… o-okay… well… g-good luck, me.”

The boy doesn’t stop crying, but he’s smiling again as he’s running off. “You’re gonna be great, you’ll see! You’ll be surrounded by so many friends and—and I’ll get some dogs, and you’ll have a photography studio, and you’ll _love_ it! And love living! And it’ll be great! You’ll see! I’ll do it! We’ll both be okay! Okay? Just you wait! You’ll believe me!”

He babbles on in that way that only Promptos do, in a desperate effort to convince them both of his words being truths, but by the time those words stop reaching Prompto’s ears he still feels unaffected.

When the echoing noises from the younger Prompto dissipate from the atmosphere, the room’s emptiness becomes focused and overpowering. There’s no sound, no sensation, only Prompto standing numb in this strange place that seems neither merciful nor unforgiving. 

He’s sure he’s slipping through existence and it’s not going to matter. He isn’t floating but he doesn’t know if he’s standing either. He doesn’t think it makes sense that his legs could hold him up anymore. It should be described as dreamlike, but it doesn’t feel like a dream at all. He keeps crying. It feels real, but it also doesn’t feel like anything. He doesn’t know how long he’s supposed to feel like this, or how long he endures it.

But, like a dream, it ends.

He doesn’t wake up.

**Author's Note:**

> WELL THAT WAS SAD.
> 
> I don't know how to feel about this. Some parts I like, some parts I don't. This was visualized as the beginning the middle and the end, and then I had to fill all the gaps. I never got the conversation to flow like I wanted it to and I'm not sure if the extent of Prompto's despair and hopelessness showed. I might try to rewrite it better at some point but also it doesn't feel super healthy to work too long on this. At any rate, I hope it all was at least coherent and made some sense.
> 
> The part where younger Prompto is insisting that Prompto could wake up from this and try again is supposed to imply that if he had the willpower to live he could hang on long enough to make it to the hospital and he'd wake up there, but he couldn't find the will to do that and so it just didn't happen.
> 
> This could be taken in a lot of ways. Like is that actually a Prompto visiting from the past and he can actually change his future? Or is it Present!Prompto's compromised mind trying to reason with itself to live a bit longer? Does he straight up die in the end? Does he disappear and become the new Prompto that Past!Prompto was so adamant about? Or he ceases to exist because Past!Prompto makes sure this doesn't happen?
> 
> Uhhh, regardless, we have ourselves one (1) dead Prompto here. Sorry.
> 
> I also wanna say, I generally avoid reading downer fics and it makes me too sad when Prompto doesn't get a big dose of comfort, but I was in a really bad head space when I was writing this and I'm still not feeling so great so this is what came out of that. I hope this doesn't come off as hating Prompto or bros bashing, it's just what came together and I hope it makes any sense.
> 
> I also have another suicide prompt meandering around in my head that would ideally end better but could also end up ending with another dead Prompto so I'm not sure. Fics where the bros are insensitive to Prompto make me really sad, but also when I'm feeling bad enough I can't get a feel of things going right so then they go wrong. I'll be kicking the idea around.
> 
> I'm not gonna write a chapter 2 or fix-it for this, it's broke. RIP. I'll hug any fic where Prompto survives and gets help and hugs though. More of those please.
> 
> AH, ALSO, RE: THE ONE OTHER FIC ON MY ACCOUNT RN, i started it to occupy myself while job hunting and waiting. Accidentally got a job much sooner than anticipated so I haven't had the chance to sit down and keep working at it. I don't intend to abandon it but I will certainly be much slower about updating it, sorry.
> 
> My apologies for these LENGTHY NOTES. I'm sad. If you got through it and the fic, thank you so much for reading. I hope there was something of worth to be gained or experienced here. Thanks.


End file.
